Glossary

Provides functionality to navigate to related content or to invoke operations, functions or processes in external systems. You can include actions in analyses, dashboard pages, agents, scorecard objectives, scorecard initiatives, and KPIs.

The Action Framework is a component of the Oracle BI EE architecture and includes a J2EE application called the Action Execution Service (AES) and actions-specific JavaScript functionality deployed as part of Oracle BI EE. The action framework also includes client-side functionality for creating actions and invoking certain action types directly from the browser.

action link

A link to an action that you have embedded in an analysis, dashboard page, scorecard objective, scorecard initiative, or KPI that, when clicked, runs an associated action.

Provides the developer the ability to include Oracle Business Intelligence catalog objects in ADF Applications. This component uses a SOAP connection to access the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog.

Admin Server

Is part of the WebLogic domain, and runs the processes that manage Oracle Business Intelligence components. The Admin Server contains the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console, and Fusion Middleware Control.

Enables you to automate your business processes. You can use them to provide event-driven alerting, scheduled content publishing, and conditional event-driven action execution.

Agents can dynamically detect information-based problems and opportunities, determine the appropriate individuals to notify, and deliver information to them through a wide range of devices (e-mail, phones, and so on).

aggregate persistence

A feature that automates the creation and loading of aggregate tables and their corresponding Oracle Business Intelligence metadata mappings to enable aggregate navigation.

aggregate table

A table that stores precomputed results from measures that have been aggregated over a set of dimensional attributes. Each aggregate table column contains data at a given set of levels. For example, a monthly sales table might contain a precomputed sum of the revenue for each product in each store during each month. Using aggregate tables optimizes performance.

aggregation rule

In an Oracle BI repository, a rule applied to a logical column or physical cube column that specifies a particular aggregation function to be applied to the column data, such as SUM.

In Presentation Services, users can see the rules that have been applied in the repository. Users can also change the default aggregation rules for measure columns.

alias table

A physical table that references a different physical table as its source. Alias tables can be used to set up multiple tables, each with different keys, names, or joins, when a single physical table needs to serve in different roles. Because alias table names are included in physical SQL queries, you can also use alias tables to provide meaningful table names, making the SQL statements easier to read.

analysis

A query that a user creates on the Criteria tab in Presentation Services. An analysis can optionally contain one or more filters or selection steps to restrict the results.

The details of a dimension in an Oracle BI repository. Attributes usually appear as columns of a dimension table.

attribute column

In Presentation Services, a column that holds a flat list of values that are also known as members. No hierarchical relationship exists between these members, as is the case for members of a hierarchical column. Examples include ProductID or City.

A piece of business intelligence content that is created with Presentation Services and saved to the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. Examples of BI objects include analyses, dashboards, dashboard pages, scorecards, and KPIs.

BI Search

A search tool that resides outside of Presentation Services. BI Search is available from the Home Page after the Administrator adds a link to the BI Search URL. BI Search provides a mechanism for searching for objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog that is similar to a full-text search engine.

bookmark link

Captures the path to a dashboard page and all aspects of the page state.

Contains the business model definitions and the mappings from logical to physical tables. Business models are always dimensional, unlike objects in the Physical layer, which reflect the organization of the data sources. Each business model contains logical tables, columns, and joins.

Business Model and Mapping layer

A layer of the Oracle BI repository that defines the business, or logical, model of the data and specifies the mapping between the business model and the Physical layer schemas. This layer can contain one or more business models.

The Business Model and Mapping layer determines the analytic behavior that is seen by users, and defines the superset of objects available to users. It also hides the complexity of the source data models.

business owner

The person responsible for managing and improving the business value and performance of a KPI or scorecard object, such as an objective, cause and effect map, and so on.

A column in a time dimension that identifies the chronological order of the members within a dimension level. The key must be unique at its level.

Cluster Controller

A process that serves as the first point of contact for new requests from Presentation Services and other clients. The Cluster Controller determines which Oracle BI Server in the cluster to direct the request to based on Oracle BI Server availability and load. It monitors the operation of servers in the cluster, including the Oracle BI Scheduler instances. The Cluster Controller is deployed in active-passive configuration.

column

In an Oracle BI repository, columns can be physical columns, logical columns, or presentation columns.

In Presentation Services, indicates the pieces of data that an analysis will return. Together with filters and selection steps, columns determine what analyses will contain. Columns also have names that indicate the types of information that they contain, such as Account and Contact.

A join in the Physical layer of an Oracle BI repository that uses an expression other than equals.

condition

Objects that return a single Boolean value based on the evaluation of an analysis or of a key performance indicator (KPI). You use conditions to determine whether agents deliver their content and execute their actions, whether actions links are displayed in dashboard pages, or whether sections and their content are displayed in dashboard pages.

An OLAP (online analytical processing) data structure that lets data be analyzed more quickly and with greater flexibility than structures in relational databases. Cubes are made up of measures and organized by dimensions. Cubes in multidimensional data sources roughly correspond to star schemas in relational database models.

currency prompt

A prompt that allow the user to change the currency type that displays in the currency columns on an analysis or dashboard.

An object that provides personalized views of corporate and external information. A dashboard consists of one or more pages. Pages can display anything that you can access or open with a Web browser, such as results of analyses, images, alerts from agents, and so on.

dashboard prompt

A prompt that is added to the dashboard. When the user selects a prompt value, that value then determines the content that will display in all analyses included on the dashboard.

Used for incorporating or referencing the content of a specific dashboard in external portals or applications. It has a number of forms and optional arguments that can be used to control its behavior.

data source name (DSN)

A data structure that contains the information about a specific database, typically used by an ODBC driver to connect to the database. The DSN contains information such as the name, directory, and driver of the database.

Instructions placed within a SQL statement that tell the database query optimizer the most efficient way to execute the statement. Hints override the optimizer's execution plan, so you can use hints to improve performance by forcing the optimizer to use a more efficient plan. Hints are only supported for Oracle Database data sources.

dimension

A hierarchical organization of logical columns (attributes). One or more logical dimension tables may be associated with at most one dimension.

A dimension may contain one or more (unnamed) hierarchies. There are two types of logical dimensions: dimensions with level-based hierarchies (structure hierarchies), and dimensions with parent-child hierarchies (value hierarchies).

A particular type of level-based dimension, called a time dimension, provides special functionality for modeling time series data.

Event polling tables (also called event tables) provide information to the Oracle BI Server about which physical tables have been updated. They are used to keep the query cache up-to-date. The Oracle BI Server cache system polls the event table, extracts the physical table information from the rows, and purges stale cache entries that reference those physical tables.

Essbase

A multidimensional database management system available from Oracle that provides a multidimensional database platform upon which to build business intelligence applications. Also referred to as Oracle's Hyperion Essbase.

fact table

In an Oracle BI repository, a logical table in the Business Model and Mapping layer that contains measures and has complex join relationships with dimension tables.

Criteria that are applied to attribute and measure columns to limit the results that are displayed when an analysis is run. For measure columns, filters are applied before the query is aggregated and affect the query and thus the resulting values.

A column or a set of columns in one table that references the primary key columns in another table.

fragmentation content

The portion, or fragment, of the set of data specified in a logical table source when the logical table source does not contain the entire set of data at a given level. Fragmentation content is defined by the logical columns that are entered in the Fragmentation content box in the Content tab of the Logical Table Source dialog box.

An Oracle BI Presentation Services user interface object that contains links and options that allow the user to quickly begin a task or locate a specific object within the Presentation Catalog. The global header always displays in the Presentation Services user interface, thus allowing users to quickly access links and search the catalog without having to navigate to the Home Page or Catalog page.

Go URL

Used to incorporate specific business intelligence results into external portals or applications. The Go URL is used when you add a result to your favorites or add a link to a request to your dashboard or external Web site. It has a number of forms and optional arguments that can be used to control its behavior.

hierarchical column

In Presentation Services, a column that holds data values that are organized using both named levels and parent-child relationships. This column is displayed using a tree-like structure. Individual members are shown in an outline manner, with lower-level members rolling into higher-level members. For example, a specific day belongs to a particular month, which in turn is within a particular year. Examples include Time or Geography.

In an Oracle BI repository, a system of levels in a logical dimension that are related to each other by one-to-many relationships. All hierarchies must have a common leaf level and a common root (all) level.

Hierarchies are not modeled as separate objects in the metadata. Instead, they are an implicit part of dimension objects.

Provides an intuitive, task-based entry way into the functionality of Presentation Services. The Home page is divided into sections that allow you to quickly begin specific tasks, locate an object, or access technical documentation.

image prompt

A prompt that provides an image with different areas mapped to specific values. The user clicks an image area to select the prompt value that populates the analysis or dashboard.

Used to initialize dynamic repository variables, system session variables, and nonsystem session variables. An initialization block contains the SQL statements that will be executed to initialize or refresh the variables associated with that block.

initiative

Used in a scorecard, an initiative is a time-specific task or project that is necessary to achieve objectives. As such, you can use initiatives that support objectives as milestones as they reflect progress toward strategy targets.

A measurement that defines and tracks specific business goals and strategic objectives. KPIs often times roll up into larger organizational strategies that require monitoring, improvement, and evaluation. KPIs have measurable values that usually vary with time, have targets to determine a score and performance status, include dimensions to allow for more precise analysis, and can be compared over time for trending purposes and to identify performance patterns.

A method of distributing KPIs to end users. A watchlist is a collection of KPIs that are built by adding the KPIs stored in the catalog. After a KPI watchlist is built and saved, it is stored as a catalog object and can be added to dashboards and scorecards.

Folders used to organize objects in the Business Model and Mapping layer. They have no metadata meaning.

logical join

Joins that express relationships between logical tables. Logical joins are conceptual, rather than physical, joins. In other words, they do not join to particular keys or columns. A single logical join can correspond to many possible physical joins.

In an Oracle BI repository, a component of a level-based hierarchy that either rolls up or is rolled up from other levels.

Parent-child hierarchies have implicit, inter-member levels between ancestors and descendants that are not exposed as logical level objects in the metadata. Although parent-child hierarchies also contain logical level objects, these levels are system generated and exist to enable aggregation across all members only.

The SQL statements that are understood by the Oracle BI Server. The Oracle BI Server Logical SQL includes standard SQL, plus special functions (SQL extensions) like AGO, TODATE, EVALUATE, and others.

Clients like Presentation Services send Logical SQL to the Oracle BI Server when a user makes a request. In addition, Logical SQL is used in the Business Model and Mapping layer to enable heterogeneous database access and portability. The Oracle BI Server transforms Logical SQL into physical SQL that can be understood by source databases.

logical table

A table object in the Business Model and Mapping layer of an Oracle BI repository. A single logical table can map to one or more physical tables. Logical tables can be either fact tables or dimension tables.

Objects in the Business Model and Mapping layer of an Oracle BI repository that define the mappings from a single logical table to one or more physical tables. The physical to logical mapping can also be used to specify transformations that occur between the Physical layer and the Business Model and Mapping layer, as well as to enable aggregate navigation and fragmentation.

Managed Server

An individual J2EE application container (JMX MBean container). It provides local management functions on individual hosts for Java components and System components contained within the local middleware home, and refers to the Admin Server for all of its configuration and deployment information.

A column that can change for each record and can be added up or aggregated in some way. Typical measures are sales dollars and quantity ordered. Measures are calculated from data sources at query time.

Measure columns are displayed in the Oracle BI repository, usually in fact tables, or in Presentation Services.

The Oracle BI repository is made up of the metadata used by the Oracle BI Server to process queries.

metadata dictionary

A static set of XML documents that describe metadata objects, such as a column, including its properties and relationships with other metadata objects. A metadata dictionary can help users obtain more information about metrics or attributes for repository objects.

mission statement

A statement in a scorecard that specifies the key business goals and priorities that are required to achieve your vision.

In the Oracle BI Administration Tool, a mode where a repository builder can edit a repository that is not loaded into the Oracle BI Server.

online mode

In the Oracle BI Administration Tool, a mode where a repository builder can edit a repository while it is available for query operations. Online mode also allows user session monitoring for users connected to the subject areas in the repository.

opaque view

A Physical layer table that consists of a SELECT statement. In the Oracle BI repository, opaque views appear as view tables in the physical databases, but the view does not actually exist.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

A standard interface used to access data in both relational and non-relational databases. Database applications can use ODBC to access data stored in different types of database management systems, even if each database uses a different data storage format and programming interface.

A Windows application that is used to create and edit Oracle BI repositories. The Administration Tool provides a graphical representation of the three parts of a repository: the Physical layer, Business Model and Mapping layer, and the Presentation layer.

Oracle BI Briefing Books

A collection of static or updatable snapshots of dashboard pages, individual analyses, and BI Publisher reports. You can download briefing books in PDF or MHTML format for printing and viewing. You also can update, schedule, and deliver briefing books using agents.

Oracle BI JavaHost

A service that gives Presentation Services the ability to use functionality that is provided in Java libraries to support components such as graphs. The services are provided based on a request-response model.

Oracle BI Logical SQL View Object

Provides the developer the ability to create a Logical SQL statement to access the Oracle BI Server and fetch business intelligence data and bind it to native ADF components for inclusion on an ADF page. This view object uses a BI JDBC connection to the Oracle BI Server.

Oracle BI Presentation Catalog

Stores business intelligence objects, such as analyses and dashboards, and provides an interface where users create, access, and manage objects, and perform specific object-based tasks (for example, export, print, and edit). The catalog is organized into folders that are either shared or personal.

Oracle BI Presentation Services

Provides the framework and interface for the presentation of business intelligence data to Web clients. It maintains a Presentation Catalog service on the file system for the customization of this presentation framework. It is a standalone process and communicates with the Oracle BI Server using ODBC over TCP/IP. It consists of components that are known as Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards.

A file that stores Oracle Business Intelligence metadata. The metadata defines logical schemas, physical schemas, physical-to-logical mappings, aggregate table navigation, and other constructs. The repository file has an extension of .rpd. Oracle BI repositories can be edited using the Oracle BI Administration Tool.

A standalone process that maintains the logical data model that it provides to Presentation Services and other clients through ODBC. Metadata is maintained for the data model in a local proprietary file called the repository file. The Oracle BI Server processes user requests and queries underlying data sources.

Oracle BI Server XML API

Provides utilities to create a generic, XML-based representation of the Oracle BI repository metadata. This XML file version of the repository can be used to programmatically modify the metadata. The Oracle BI Server XML API objects correspond to metadata repository objects in an RPD file. These objects are not the same as Oracle BI Presentation Catalog XML objects.

An API that implements SOAP. These Web services are designed for programmatic use, where a developer uses one Web service to invoke many different business intelligence objects. These Web services provide functionality on a wide range of Presentation Services operations. These Web services allow the developer to extract results from Oracle BI Presentation Services and deliver them to external applications, perform Presentation Services management functions, and execute Oracle Business Intelligence alerts (known as Intelligent Agents).

Contains three Web services, ExecuteAgent, ExecuteAnalysis, and ExecuteCondition, which are hosted by the bimiddleware J2EE application. These web services are designed to enable developers to use third-party Web services clients (for example, Oracle SOA Suite) to browse for and include business intelligence objects in service oriented architecture components.

A connection interface that the Oracle BI Server can use to connect to Oracle Database data sources. You should always use OCI when importing metadata from or connecting to an Oracle Database.

Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server (OPMN)

A process management tool that manages all System components (server processes), and supports both local and distributed process management, automatic process recycling and the communication of process state (up, down, starting, stopping). OPMN detects process unavailability and automatically restarts processes).

A performance management tool that lets you describe and communicate your business strategy. You can drive and assess your corporate strategy and performance from the top of your organization down, or from the bottom up.

Oracle Technology Network (OTN)

A repository of technical information about Oracle's products where you can search for articles, participate in discussions, ask the user community technical questions, and search for and download Oracle products and documentation.

parent-child hierarchy

A hierarchy of members that all have the same type. All the dimension members of a parent-child hierarchy occur in a single data source. In a parent-child hierarchy, the inter-member relationships are parent-child relationships between dimension members.

A table with values that explicitly define the inter-member relationships in a parent-child hierarchy. Also called a closure table.

pass-through calculation

A calculation that will not be computed by the Oracle BI Server but will instead be passed to another data source. Enables advanced users to leverage data source features and functions without the need to modify the Oracle BI repository.

permissions

Specify which users can access an object, as well as limit how users can interact with an object. Examples of permissions include write, delete, and change permissions.

A category in your organization with which to associate initiatives, objectives, and KPIs in a scorecard. A perspective can represent a key stakeholder (such as a customer, employee, or shareholder/financial) or a key competency area (such as time, cost, or quality).

An object in the Physical layer of a repository that groups different schemas. A catalog contains all the schemas (metadata) for a database object.

physical display folder

Folders that organize objects in the Physical layer of an Oracle BI repository. They have no metadata meaning.

physical join

Joins between tables in the Physical layer of an Oracle BI repository.

Physical layer

A layer of the Oracle BI repository that contains objects that represent physical data constructs from back-end data sources. The Physical layer defines the objects and relationships available for writing physical queries. This layer encapsulates source dependencies to enable portability and federation.

physical schema

An object in the Physical layer of an Oracle BI repository that represents a schema from a back-end database.

physical table

An object in the Physical layer of an Oracle BI repository, usually corresponding to a table that exists in a physical database.

An object in the Presentation layer of an Oracle BI repository that provides an explicit way to expose the multidimensional model in Presentation Services and other clients. Presentation hierarchies expose analytic functionality such as member selection, custom member groups, and asymmetric queries. Users can create hierarchy-based queries using presentation hierarchies.

In Presentation Services, presentation hierarchies are displayed as hierarchical columns.

Provides a way to present customized, secure, role-based views of a business model to users. It adds a level of abstraction over the Business Model and Mapping layer in the Oracle BI repository. The Presentation layer provides the view of the data seen by users who build analyses in Presentation Services and other client tools and applications.

In the Oracle BI repository, a component of a presentation hierarchy that either rolls up or is rolled up from other levels. Presentation levels are displayed as levels within hierarchical columns in Presentation Services.

An object in the Presentation layer of an Oracle BI repository that is used to organize columns into categories that make sense to the user community. A presentation table can contain columns from one or more logical tables. The names and object properties of the presentation tables are independent of the logical table properties.

primary key

A column (or set of columns) where each value is unique and identifies a single row of a table.

process instance

A unique process on an individual workstation that is associated with a BI instance.

A type of filter that allows the content designer to build and specify data values or the end user to choose specific data values to provide a result sets for an individual analysis or multiple analyses included on a dashboard or dashboard page. A prompt expands or refines existing dashboard and analysis filters.

The response returned to the user from the execution of a query created using Oracle BI Publisher. Reports can be formatted, presented on a dashboard page, saved in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog, and shared with other users.

A choice of values that is applied after the query is aggregated that affects only the members displayed, not the resulting aggregate values. Along with filters, selection steps restrict the results for an analysis.

A hierarchy where some members do not have a value for a particular ancestor level. For example, in the United States, the city of Washington in the District of Columbia does not belong to a state. The expectation is that users can still navigate from the country level (United States) to Washington and below without the need for a state.

A relational schema that allows dimensional analysis of historical information. Star schemas have one-to-many relationships between the logical dimension tables and the logical fact table. Each star consists of a single fact table joined to a set of denormalized dimension tables.

strategy map

A component of a scorecard that shows how the objectives that have been defined for a scorecard and the KPIs that measure their progress are aligned by perspectives. It also shows cause and effect relationships.

In an Oracle BI repository, an object in the Presentation layer that organizes and presents data about a business model. It is the highest-level object in the Presentation layer and represents the view of the data that users see in Presentation Services. Oracle BI repository subject areas contain presentation tables, presentation columns, and presentation hierarchies.

Work that is performed on data when moving from a database to another location (sometimes another database). Some transformations are typically performed on data when it is moved from a transaction system to a data warehouse system.

unbalanced hierarchy

A hierarchy where the leaves do not have the same depth. For example, an organization may choose to have data for the current month at the day level, data for the previous at the month level, and data for the previous five years at the quarter level.

Objects in an Oracle BI repository that are used to streamline administrative tasks and dynamically modify metadata content to adjust to a changing data environment.

Variables are of the following types:

Repository variables have a single value at any point in time. There are two types of repository variables: static and dynamic.

Session variables are created and assigned a value when each user logs on. There are two types of session variables: system and nonsystem.

variable prompt

Allows the user to select a value specified in the variable prompt to display on the dashboard. A variable prompt is not dependent upon column data, but allows you to manipulate, for example add or multiply, the column data on an analysis.

A physical table that is made from a stored procedure or a SELECT statement. Creating virtual tables can provide the Oracle BI Server and the underlying databases with the proper metadata to perform some advanced query requests.

vision statement

A short statement in a scorecard that describes what your organization wants to become sometime in the future. For example, it might be to become the most successful business in the South America Polypropylene Market.